Bilingual attentional control: Evidence from the Partial Repetition Cost paradigm

Abstract

The effects of bilingual language experience on cognitive control are still debated. A recent proposal is that being bilingual enhances attentional control. This is based on studies showing smaller effects of the nature of the preceding trial on the current trial in bilinguals (Grundy et al., 2017). However, performance on such tasks can also be accounted for by lower-level processes such as the binding and unbinding of stimulus and response features. The current study used a Partial Repetition Cost paradigm to explicitly test whether language experience can affect such processes. Results showed that bi- and monolinguals did not differ in their responses when the stimulus features were task-relevant. However, the bilinguals showed smaller partial repetition costs when the features were task-irrelevant. These findings suggest that language experience does not affect lower-level processes, and supports the view that bilinguals exhibit enhanced attentional disengagement.